


A Country of Eternal Light (Lost in Darkness and Distance)

by orphan_account



Category: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: But We Can Just Ignore That, Crossover, Gen, Gratuitous Frankenstein, Platonic!Sherlock/John, Scientific Implausibility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-22
Updated: 2011-08-22
Packaged: 2017-10-22 23:21:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/243688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account





	A Country of Eternal Light (Lost in Darkness and Distance)

There’s an easy way to tell the mad from the sane, people say. There’s an urban myth that they talk to themselves; that’s the first sign. Next they’ll probably start seeing things, hallucinating, perhaps, to dress it up like that; maybe after that a doctor will stare solemnly at them and commit all sorts of minor atrocities under the guise of ‘tests’, only to come to the same conclusion that the masses did just from a derisive glance.

Of course, that’s assuming there’s something to diagnose.

Well, that’s debatable.

If a man sits amongst the consoling darkness in a dazzling, uncharacteristic British summer, while the masses swelter and puff, wafting their hands by their faces to propel a faint wind, is that madness or common sense? Perhaps one might call it forward planning; this man dwells in the darkness while others seek out the shade that’ll act like a balm to their unprepared, alabaster skin. Perhaps the solitude is odd. If a man remains in his basement while the streets outside are flecked with rain and gusts rip through hair and dresses, through billowing coats, is that insanity or sagacity? Perhaps he’s sensible to hide from the elements in a basement heated by the product of his experiments. Perhaps he’s crazy for remaining without human contact for thirteen months now.

A mad person is supposed to lose their wits, like sense is something one can leave on public transport, drop on the pavement, cover up with piles of books and papers and forget just where you placed it. The mere act of ‘losing’ suggests that it is somehow their fault. This could somehow be preventable, this descent into the unknown, a place where things are either blindingly bright or abhorrently dark. They expect the insane to be held accountable for this, don’t they, like they will somehow be able to command which recesses surface – but consider how someone with apparently absent wits can be in control of them once lost.

Sherlock Holmes doesn’t consider himself _mad_.

He’s many adjectives: a large percentage of them are complimentary and self-medicated; the rest come from childhood and memories and the newspaper articles that soon stopped being written when he stopped going outside. It’s difficult to make stories when you refuse to partake in them. There’s one, however, that stands out from the rest, like a word in bold type amidst a page of regular lettering; a child whose school uniform is irregular from the rest.

Sherlock Holmes is **lonely**.

The inactive sit and lament; those who truly have brains do something about their situation. That’s why he’s not mad. He can describe the sight and smell of every soil in London and list every unsolved murder in the area since 1973. Ask him the current time or date and he’ll stare at you, face pallid and eyes watery, not quite sure what you mean. He assumes the Met have gotten better at hounding criminals, recently – he’s not gotten any calls. There is no gap in his specific knowledge. He’s not needed.

A man discovering his insignificance must do something to reinforce his self-worth. He scribbled in notepads and tipped substances into substances; played with fire and water, solid, liquid and gas; strapped together a harness for uncontrollable power. Through his loneliness he became its master, though everything he believed in told him it was not possible. They screamed and screamed and he thanked them for their points of view but slowly smothered their voices until all that was left was silence. The victorious silence of incomparable endeavour, made possible only through-

Madness?

It’s a night in November – the date is immaterial; Sherlock himself has no knowledge of its existence – when his dreams are realised and the man opens his eyes.

Both men do.

Sherlock Holmes has never seen anything so disgusting in his life but he _understands_.

He watches himself blink, he watches the fear, the rush of sense and knowledge and confusion, the first breaths of a new existence; this person he sees before him will never be attractive but will always be beautiful.

 _I will give you a name_ , he says, perhaps out loud, perhaps just in his head.

The creature raises his hand.

\--

He allows them a candle; his eyes burn and he soothes them with their comforting lids for minutes before he can gaze again at the flickering flame. They sit together. The air holds something of a séance and the sudden appearance of metaphor has never been more welcome to the man with a brain that runs on science.

It has been six weeks since the birth of Man and the creature is starting to speak. His features become further apparent in the dancing light: his eyes are light, a blue-grey of a half-remembered sky; his skin the pale yellow of jaundice; his hair tufts of light brown, dishwater, others would call it. Sherlock did not make him tall. It only seemed cruel.

He utters proto-words and they are hung on, deciphered, all of them. He has no trouble with the vowels and enjoys sibilance, the hissing he can produce with his teeth and tongue, mimicry of the pots that boiled and bubbled around his creation. His favourite, however, appears more urgent, jabbered out with erratic hand movements and a _smile._

 _Ju… juh… joh…_

He decides to call him John.

 _John_ , he repeats, elaborates, names.

 _Joh… John…_

You’re John.

\--

He’s an experiment, that’s what he’d tell them if they ever cared to ask. He’d insist in response to their screams of barbarism that the creature who now walks and talks with the vocabulary of a five year-old was brought into being for observation, to prove a point to science, simply for study.

They haven’t come out of the basement. They have food, enough. Tins and tins that won’t sustain them, not really, but John is hewn from an element that could survive on less. Sherlock has abandoned all concern for his physical wellbeing. Soon his creation will become swift, hold slight of foot, a speed unable to be matched by man; Sherlock will grow weak and the irony won’t be lost on him.

Sherlock will abandon John, soon enough; he will have no choice.

In the meantime John learns, acquires knowledge with an alacrity only ever demonstrated once before in the man who is teaching him. His light and watery eyes gaze at his master and his master gazes back, watching himself be taught, an objective view of his own past.

‘He’ is a pronoun that John deserves; he becomes both more and less like a man every day.

Sherlock is aware that humanity and human description have now become mutually exclusive.

The name of his master proves somewhat difficult; of course he would be blessed with the most awkward of forenames. It’s a phonetic challenge that baffles even the most educated of souls, let alone a man conjured up from corpses. Sherlock sits and watches this creature read and pretends that life didn’t make its way out through death, that the person in front of him is not an amalgamation of decaying things, that he didn’t have to sink this low to create someone that would simply love him.

When John looks up, the reverence in his eyes appears unconditional.

Perhaps it’s the light.

\--

Conversations begin to flourish; they’d discuss the poetry of creation if Sherlock had ever read it – instead John talks in stuttering, slurred bursts of sound and Sherlock observes, back channel noises the only thing he can muster. He doesn’t sleep, his brain is too alive with his endeavour; his body is forced to twitch and short-circuit in order for him to get the rest he so desperately acquires. In these periods of unconsciousness Sherlock doesn’t see how his creation watches over him, clumsy fingers clubbing at his lank hair in a gesture neither of them would understand.

It’s on the horizon for months and only one of them understands.

John discovers that his grip will open cans, crushing them until they unwillingly spill their contents out across his hands. He tips the sludge into Sherlock’s gaping mouth, the scarred lips bleeding from weeks of scratching metal but nothing is ever said. John discovers that glass hurts when embedded in the skin but causes more pain with its removal. He dabs at the crimson with the soiled shirt supplied to him when he was merely an infant floundering in the body of an adult. John discovers that when Sherlock screams in the night these choked off vowels mean different things. There is pain, the burn of memories, guilt and regret; this man created by man is only beginning to comprehend those feelings. He has trouble remembering so writes on everything: _Sherlock, Food, Sharp, Sleep, Blood._

When the nights become silent, John fills them with his own yowls.

He doesn’t understand why Sherlock’s eyes won’t open anymore, why his chest no longer throbs its reliable pulse. He would lie with his head on his creator’s chest and be lulled to sleep by its thudding; now there is nothing but hollow emptiness. He prods at the man who gave birth to him as he stiffens and greys and cannot understand why he never groans back anymore. He sleeps with arms wrapped around him until the smell becomes intolerable.

Scrabbling at the door precedes the turn and click of a lock, steps up to a light so strong weak irises cry out in pain and horror; it half blinds as he staggers up, dropping to his hands and knees in the face of this agonising new sight. It only gets worse as he proceeds with eyes closed, in fear, because he will surely explode if he opens them fully. Noise deafens, rumbling like the Earth will split in two and this must be _life_ , he thinks; he’s terrified. Everything he’s missed in his existence descends upon him to the music of screams of horror as he breathes fresh air for the first time.

It’s a beast, stand back, get away!

He straightens up with trembling legs and weakened bones, skin that seems to sizzle under the sun’s glare.

He walks forward and no one stops him.  


\--


End file.
